Peter Goodwin presents Accelerate Nottingham's plans to address the needs and aspirations of the citizens of Nottingham through innovative use of technology and tackling the challenges of digital exclusion.
Nottingham’s 670,000 citizens are part of a vibrant and diverse network of communities with a strong tradition of partnership working. Our digital challenge vision is of a city where our citizens, and visitors to the city, can choose how they interact (with each other, public service providers and businesses) using the full range of available technologies. We envisage a situation where information can flow freely from providers to citizen by methods best suited to individual needs. This public engagement underpins our bid and is sharpening its inherent proposals.
We already know our community well through our engagement with the Single Regeneration Budget (SRB), New Deal for Communities (NDC), One Nottingham (Nottingham’s Local Strategic Partnership (LSP), Greater Nottingham Partnership (GNP) and Local Area Partnerships. Extensive consultation has taken place by these partnerships to develop a range of plans and we have built on that by engaging in further consultation in developing this vision to see where we can maximise the use of technology and change where it matters most to people. Greater Nottingham Partnership has a strong track record of bringing our bid partners together to work on ground breaking projects that benefit Nottingham’s citizens. The city’s strong tradition of partnership working means the NHS, Police and BT have been on board from the very beginning.
Our existing robust partnership, and ICT arm of Greater Nottingham Partnership, Accelerate Nottingham, is committed to aligning strategies and delivery to achieve change and efficiencies, working with our communities to deliver on our chosen priority areas and works closely with most organisations within the conurbation addressing issues of social inclusion. These organisations include NDC, the LSP, Nottingham Council for Voluntary Services (NCVS) and Nottinghamshire Rural Community Council (NRCC)
Our bid is focusing on how ICT can be a real enabler for our citizens.
Priorities laid out in our bid derive from certain key facts about Nottingham. For example, 18.7% of Greater Nottingham’s population has a limiting long-term illness or disability and 31.9% live in single-person homes and are predominantly older people. The employment rate in Nottingham is 65.5 %compared to the national average of 75.1 % (Local Future Study May 2005). Worklessness is therefore a key driver of disadvantage within the city.
Incapacity Benefit recipients are the highest proportional group within the city’s workless residents. We are working with the existing Making the Connections project to ensure technology, innovation and transformation are firmly embedded into solutions to making more people economically active.
Nottingham has a vibrant multi-cultural population. Central to our Challenge programme will be the creation of family and social networks that are comfortable with technology in all its forms. A sense of neighbourhood and community will be developed to build our partners’ Respect for Nottingham agenda. The public sector and its response to request for services, its accountability and how it interacts with its customer base will be crucial to this process.
Nottingham realises how important family connections are to the success of our bid. We want to build a digital city where we can develop the prevailing sense of family and neighbourhood in our city. We recognise the importance of encouraging older residents to use technology - digital cameras, videos and so on, to share their experiences with younger residents. This will help develop technology skills in older generations and foster respect in the younger. Nottingham is working, and will continue to work, to ensure strong links between schools, home and technology under this theme.
Our consultation clearly demonstrated an underlying belief that as people get older or ill, technology can be a turning point with the potential to transform the user experiences of public services. In Nottingham’s digital community, the elderly, the sick or people with disabilities will benefit from a range of ground-breaking technologies to make their lives more comfortable and less stressful – all supported by a public sector which integrates its processes.
Community groups will be able to buy into a managed service at low cost; enabling them to have all the benefits associated with leading edge technology without worrying how it works and what happens if it fails.
Problems surrounding engagement of excluded groups are not always technological. We will work to provide workless or homeless citizens with support mechanisms and structures – helping them to engage with suppliers and enabling them to cross the digital divide. This requires advice and support at a personal level and an understanding of the barriers people face in using technology, something Nottingham has developed over the last three years.
Independent living
Telecare and telemedicine
Nottingham PCT and Nottingham Trent University will be running a project focusing on the integration of healthcare and social services’ operational processes and records. Projects of this kind are targeted specifically at enabling older people and those with disabilities live more independently in their own homes. They will also be encouraged to join online networks.
Back into work/finding work
Homeshoring
Delivered in partnership with Cisco Systems, the project aims to recruit three Nottingham employers and train 90 agents – focusing on the over 50s, disabled and incapacitated people, women returners, single mothers and rural and ethnic communities. Three ‘hubs’ will be established locally.
Underpinning Nottingham’s Digital Challenge are the city’s annual GameCity festival and the proposed e-lympics celebrations. GameCity kicked off in 2006 and was the UK’s first annual festival of interactive entertainment, encompassing exhibitions, demonstrations, gaming and public discussions. Both events are designed to increase awareness and interest in ICT – learning through fun.
We envisage a digital community in Nottingham where relevant and timely information flows to citizens through text messaging, wireless technology, TV and PC. Simply put, we will make sure individual needs and wants are met – whenever and however. Our objective is to deliver an exciting vision containing programmes that contribute towards building community capacity and social capital - creating a safe, strong, proud and prosperous Nottingham.
